Is blogger outreach a time bomb in your work plan?
How does your budget account for blogger outreach? Is it couched within a larger media outreach or stakeholder relations program? Or is it simply a one-off contract with a public relations firm?
Many social media experts counsel organizations to build a relationship with bloggers, to maintain contact and ensure a steady flow of information and comments in both directions.
Many governments find relationships easier to build with bloggers of a like-minded political bent - even if their total blogger outreach program attempts to build links with bloggers across the political spectrum.
How transparent is this relationship? Are your contracts airtight and free of any hint of conflict of interest or self-dealing?
Even more importantly - how much of a “chinese wall” has been established between your blogger outreach program and your day-to-day communications work?
Unfortunately, bloggers are still viewed as possibly biased, poorly sourced and likely conflicted.
One Minister’s office in Ottawa is facing this problem. It appears they hired a consultant to produce some communications work - a consultant who happens to write a politically friendly blog.
No matter how this contract was developed, or the distance between the consultant’s personal blogging work and her professional communications work, there is an appearance of impropriety.
It’s never a good thing when your spokesperson has to say “We do not pay bloggers in our office.” (Ottawa Citizen)
